{"id":5658,"date":"2013-10-07T08:36:13","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T15:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philborges.com\/blog\/?p=5658"},"modified":"2014-03-05T17:57:30","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T00:57:30","slug":"interview-with-angeles-arrien-openings-can-be-great-blessings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philborges.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/07\/interview-with-angeles-arrien-openings-can-be-great-blessings\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Angeles Arrien: ‘Openings’ can be Great Blessings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently 60 minutes aired a piece<\/a> on the mental health crisis in the U.S. in response to the recent wave of mass shootings by individuals with severe mental disturbance. \u00a0They stated that half of the 7 million people in the country with schizophrenia and severe mental illness are not being treated at all.\u00a0In the 70\u2019s and 80\u2019s the mental institutions were closed and the patients were released, hopefully, to go to residential treatment centers. \u00a0Unfortunately, due to insufficient funding many ended up on the streets fending for themselves. \u00a0The 60 minutes report showed how todays jails and prisons have become the new \u201cinsane asylums\u201d.<\/p>\n

Today the common treatment of choice is pharmaceuticals for symptomatic relief. \u00a0Although an improvement over some of the treatments that came before, the people taking these medications complain of feeling emotionally numb, listless and groggy. \u00a0\u00a0At one point after his \u2018psychotic break\u2019<\/a> Adam was taking 15 pills a day. His side effects included daily headaches, vomiting and debilitating anxiety. \u00a0Thomas Insel, director of the National Institutes of Mental Health<\/a>, recently acknowledged that although anti-psychotics can \u201csafely and effectively help people through the crisis of acute psychosis,\u201d the drugs might \u201cworsen prospects for recovery over the long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously the issues surrounding our current mental health crisis are multifaceted and it\u2019s not likely the solution will be simple. For this project we have interviewed professionals in a variety of fields who offer alternate ways of looking at specific aspects of this extremely complex subject.<\/p>\n

Here Angeles Arrien<\/a>, a well known author and lecturer who received her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, shares with us some of her insights gathered from her study of indigenous cultures.<\/p>\n